Current News You Can Use

Honorable Public Servants, If Measure 91 passes, people will not just be busted for growing and storing enough pot for their own use; they will lose their homes to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.  The measure allows 4 plants but only 8 ounces of “usable marijuana,” dried bud and leaf, per household, not per adult.  8 ounces, a half-pound, is enough per year for only one person who smokes only in the evening.  The poor often must live several adults to a household, and we need to grow by sunlight, which allows for only one good crop per year.  The exceptions to the licensing rules, listed in Section 6, also restrict a household to one pound of marijuana products, like cookies, and 72 ounces of liquid marijuana, which can only be vegetable glycerin extract, the only exception defined in Section 5 to “marijuana extracts,” which are forbidden in Section 57. If your household falls outside of these exceptions to licensing in Section 6, you are subject ...

Honorable Public Servants, As I told you last week , I have resumed smoking marijuana in the evenings after work.  I found that, after two weeks without it, I was progressively more depressed, to the point where good things that happened to me could not lift my mood.  It is my anti-depressant; that’s why it became my drug of choice and caused me to lose my taste for alcohol when I smoked it in college.  I have read Measure 91 in the Voters Pamphlet.  It seems to be written by the tobacco companies for their profit and for people who don’t like pot but want to tax it for their benefit.  Look at the endorsements in the Voters Pamphlet; it includes many people who formerly were stridently anti-pot. The proposed tax is a black-market-sized markup at $35 per ounce, paid by the growers.  It will revive our in-state black market, as unlicensed growers will easily be able to beat the taxed price.  Some licensed growers will also be tempted to se...

A month ago, I told quite a few people that I had quit using marijuana for good.  I was feeling worse instead of better when I smoked it.  It seemed that, instead of losing my high as had happened in the past when I smoked too much and too long, I was staying too high for comfort, as though my aging body was unable to clear the THC from my system and I was building intolerance rather than tolerance. I told this to various groups because I am the most famous pot smoker in the county, after 10 years of street protests against the Drug War, 31 Marijuana Resolution speeches to the Board of County Commissioners, and another felony pot conviction, tied to my protest.  It ended in May 2013, when I decided that I had won my point after two states legalized pot.  Being a locally notorious celebrity, I had nothing to lose by letting people know that I was quitting for my own good reasons, and I owed people the truth.  I also thought that, by being so public about i...

Honorable Mayor, Council, and Manager: We don’t have to breathe smoke until winter.  I’m breathing in my yard a lot easier than downtown, because I use misters and sprinklers to keep the smoke down.  And I’m not even watering more than necessary to keep my yard alive and healthy.  I pay about $80 extra a month to do it.  We shouldn’t have to pay through the nose to maintain our yards. Watering one’s property with sprinklers and misters benefits oneself and neighbors by cleaning and humidifying the air.  If enough people do it, we can even make rain.  An article in Science News tells us that farmers irrigating in California cause more rain in the Four Corners area and put more water in the Colorado River to water farms in the desert.           This should not be surprising.  It’s just an illustration on a large scale of the water cycle we were taught as children.  It works on the local scal...

Commentary to the Grants Pass City Council, 3-20-2013. Honorable Council, Mayor, and Manager, The annual weeds that I brought for show and tell at the meeting this week were easy to find in your parking lot, and easy to pull.   The ground is moist, their stems are tough, and their roots are small, since their roots shrink as their flowers grow. They are not easily killed or controlled by any other means, except in light, loose gravel or soil with a hula hoe.   Spraying spring weeds with glyphosate doesn’t kill them fast enough to stop seeding; usually they are already seeding by the time they are sprayed, so other chemicals fail to stop the next generation as well.   Cutting them only keeps them making seed below the cut.   Weed control is seed control; pull them before they make seed, and they won’t return to plague us next year. Our city code forbids mature and seeding weeds.   Our City Charter demands that the Manager enforce all city codes, someth...